Lust For Life Quotes
"I am not alone, for God has not forsaken me. Someday, somehow, I will find a way to serve Him."
"What the world thought made little difference. Rembrandt had to paint. Whether he painted well or badly didn’t matter; painting was the stuff that held him together as a man."
"We must act according to the best dictates of our reason, and then leave God to judge of its ultimate value."
"My aim is to humble myself, mourir à moi-même."
"Life in the Borinage goes on just as it always has."
"If they cut off fifty centimes a day we would starve to death! We would not be able to bring up their charbon; that is the only reason they do not pay us less."
"We are on the margin of death, Monsieur, every day of our lives!"
"God wills that in imitation of Jesus Christ man should live humbly and go through life not reaching after lofty aims, but adapting himself to the lowly."
"A vision appeared to Paul in the night: there stood a man of Macedonia and begged him saying, ‘Come over into Macedonia and help us’."
"We are strangers on earth. Yet we are not alone, for our Father is with us. We are pilgrims; our life is a long journey from earth to Heaven."
"Sorrow is better than joy—and even in mirth the heart is sad. It is better to go to the house of mourning than to the house of feasts, for by sadness the countenance of the heart is made better."
"For those who believe in Jesus Christ there is no sorrow that is not mixed with hope. There is only a constantly being born again, a constantly going from darkness to light."
"Father, we pray Thee to keep us from evil. Give us neither poverty nor riches, but feed us with bread appropriate to us."
"The sailor knows that all sorts of dangers await him aboard his ship, yet, ashore, he is homesick for the sea. So it is with us, Monsieur, we love our mines; we would rather be underground than above it."
"If you would understand what our lives are like, you must descend one of the mines and see how we work from three in the morning until four in the afternoon."
"The cold sapped his vitality; he began to walk around with a fever. His eyes became two great fire holes in their sockets, and his massive, Van Gogh head seemed to shrink."
"There was only chaos; miserable, suffering, cruel, tortuous, blind, endless chaos."
"Life without Vincent was somehow incomplete for him. He felt that he was a part of Vincent, and that Vincent was a part of him."
"Our inward thoughts, do they ever show outwardly? There may be a great fire in our soul and no one comes to warm himself by it."
"If I don’t study, if I don’t go on seeking any longer, then I am lost."
"Nature always begins by resisting the artist, but if I really take my work seriously, I won’t allow myself to be led astray by that resistance."
"I am a man of passions, capable of doing foolish things."
"Food tastes good," he said. "I had forgotten."
"You’re evidently trying to tell me something, old boy, but I’m blessed if I can gather what it is."
"So you’ve come to The Hague after all. Very well. Vincent, we shall make a painter of you."
"Nonsense. Vincent; it happens once in every man’s life that he has to set up housekeeping. In the long run it’s cheaper to have things of your own."
"The figure is the hardest to get, but once you have it, trees and cows and sunsets are simple."
"I used to think you were a dullard, but I see it is not so."
"There’s only one thing I’m not sure I like about this canvas."
"Even when I do landscapes, I hope to get something of the figure into them."
"Passion? Which one of the numerous passions are you referring to?"
"I’m bringing Artz’s model to your studio tomorrow morning so that we can sketch together."
"You don’t know nothing about cooking. I’m a woman."
"You violate every elemental rule of drawing."
"I will draw from casts only when there are no more hands and feet of living people to draw from."
"It is better to take more trouble on a serious study than to develop a kind of chic that will flatter the public."
"If your work is anything like your personality."
"If you starve and suffer and have your work abused and neglected for a sufficient number of years, you may eventually turn out one painting that will be fit to hang alongside of Jan Steen."
"I must draw things the way I see them, not the way you see them!"
"If I want to be active, I must not be afraid of failures."
"Life itself turns towards a man an infinitely vacant, discouraging, hopelessly blank side on which nothing is written, no more than on this blank canvas."
"When I see a blank canvas staring at me with a certain imbecility, I just dash something down."
"The key to many things is the thorough knowledge of the human body, but it decidedly costs money to learn it."
"By witnessing peasant life continually, at all hours of the day, I had become so absorbed in it that I hardly thought of anything else."
"It is the plight of most people that by a kind of fatality they have to seek a long time for light."
"I must get away from here. Out to the country somewhere. To Drenthe, maybe. Where we can live cheaply."
"To me it is as clear as day that one must feel what one draws, that one must live in the reality of family life if one wishes to express intimately that family life."
"Art demanded persistent work, work in spite of everything, and a continuous observation."
"The more he painted, the more other activities lost their interest."
"The sun sank and the square of light on the wall went out. The wrangle room was bathed in a mellow dusk."
"I love you, too, Margot," he said. "I didn’t know it before, but now I do."
"My life is a poor one, but I should be very happy if you would share it with me."
"First you must earn money and make your life straight; then you can marry," said his father.
"I’ll kill myself, Vincent, if they take me away from you. I couldn’t stand it. Not after having loved you. I’ll kill myself, that’s all."
"The flesh is the flesh and the spirit is the spirit."
"The greatest revolution in the history of art, and you want to master it in a week!"
"Each night that he came home from the gallery, exhausted and nervously on edge, Theo found Vincent waiting for him impatiently with a new canvas."
"Do you know, Vincent, there are almost five thousand painters in Paris trying to imitate Edouard Manet? And most of them do it better than you."
"The battleground was too small for either of them to survive."
"We’ll name this one, Recapitulation. We’ll label everything on the canvas."
"I can’t understand it," he complained. "Here you are the manager of one of the most important art galleries in Paris, and you won’t even exhibit one of your own brother’s canvases."
"They’re right, Henri," said Vincent, "We are crazy!"
"Ridiculed me. Mocked me. Made me a laughing stock to all Paris."
"We drink to amorality and the cult of ugliness. May it beautify and recreate the world."
"I have gone to Aries, and will write you as soon as I get there."
"The country around Aries is the most torn, desperately lashed section in Provence."
"This country is forever reaching a climax, and never having one."
"I'm getting out before the people start foaming at the mouth! I advise you to come along!"
"He became a blind painting machine, dashing off one sizzling canvas after another without even knowing what he did."
"He did not know whether his painting was good or bad. He did not care. He was drunk with colour."
"He was convinced that it was no more easy to make a good picture than it was to find a diamond or a pearl."
"Oil was only the carrying medium for colour; he did not care much for it, particularly since he did not object to his canvases having a rough look."
"You must boldly exaggerate the effects, either in harmony or discord, which colours produce."
"The sole unity in life is the unity of rhythm."
"The desire to succeed had left Vincent. He worked because he had to, because it kept him from suffering too much mentally."
"He could do without a wife, a home, and children; he could do without love and friendship and health; he could do without security, comfort, and food; he could even do without God."
"He was just a mechanism, a blind painting automaton that had food, liquid, and paint poured into it each morning, and by nightfall turned out a finished canvas."
"I have a vague memory that I offended you last evening."
"I'm going to spend the rest of my life in Aries. I'm going to become the painter of the South."
"Every room in the yellow house was charged and vibrating with electrical tension."
"You see, Madame Denis? They accept me now. They know I am one of them. They did not trust me before, but now I am a gueule noire. The miners will let me bring them the Word of God."
"If I had painted just one canvas like this, Vincent, I would consider my life justified. I spent the years curing people’s pain . . . but they died in the end, anyway . . . so what did it matter? These sunflowers of yours . . . they will cure the pain in people’s hearts . . . they will bring people joy . . . for centuries and centuries . . . that is why your life is successful . . . that is why you should be a happy man."
"I’ve painted that so many times. I have nothing new to say about it. Why should I repeat myself? Father Millet was right. ‘J’aimerais mieux ne rien dire que de m’exprimer faiblement.’"
"No excellent soul is exempt from a mixture of madness!"